Fayetteville personal injury attorney Wade E. Byrd describes himself as a good pirate. His website lists verdicts of primarily serious medical malpractice, wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases with five verdicts topping over $10 million.
Byrd is one of just four NC attorneys to receive the coveted War Horse Award from the Southern Trial Lawyers Association. “Winners are leaders in the trial bar, contributed significantly to the teaching of trial advocacy through seminars and educational programs, and Must be considered one of the true characters of his or her time,” reads the STLA website.
And when you ask some of the top personal injury lawyers in North Carolina who is the baddest gunslinger in the valley, Byrd’s name frequently comes up.
Byrd tried over 75 cases as an assistant DA in Cumberland County for four years. He has tried hundreds of cases in his 40-year practice.
Following this year’s NC Advocates for Justice convention, I asked Byrd to share with me some of his strategies and tactics.
JURY SELECTION
Jury selection is your first chance to talk to them as best you can, given the short amount of time you have. Primarily [I want to know], can I talk to them when it’s just me and them? How do I feel about the interplay between us? The most dangerous juror is the one who lies to you. They do everything they can to screw you because they don’t like trial lawyers.
I almost think every case I lost was because I made a mistake in jury selection.
MALPRACTICE CASES
You gotta know the record. You really gotta know what happened. What is the event, if there was one, that caused this patient to have a terrible result?
I’m not a doctor, and I don’t become one, but medical malpractice cases are a small part of the medical record, and you’ve just got to get the right part of it.
You gotta know it and you gotta know the medicine. So, you first need to read the records and research the medicine on your own without an expert. Then you get an expert involved, and sometimes you have to teach them because you can know as much as he does about certain things. You can learn a hell of a lot about that particular medical event. You can get a big thick medical record, but what happened in your case is probably 5,6,10 pages of that medical record – that’s where the heart of that case is.
CONFERRING WITH ATTORNEYS
Byrd has a circle of personal injury attorneys who confer with each other when they are considering taking a case or when they are preparing for a case.
You talk about everything. You talk about the defense attorney, what their style is. You talk about if anybody knows anything about the judge. You talk about the venue. Are you going to be in Charlotte? Are you going to be in Rocky Mount or Statesville? Understand your venue. What’s the jury likely to consist of? Then you talk about your facts.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
Byrd said a key to the case is the cross-examination.
It’s just preparation. You gotta know the facts. You have to know when the witness is diverging from the facts. If it’s an expert, you’ve got to know how to attack their opinions. Of course, your expert has already testified and told the jury one thing. Now these people are telling the jury something else.
In medical cases, I have to prove [the defendant] deviated from accepted standards of practice. So I have my experts, and they have their experts, and the jury thinks it’s a jump ball. You gotta cross-examine those people and be effective.
Sometimes it’s tough. It can be one of the toughest things in the world. Part of it’s knowing when to stop.
GUTS
Byrd attended legal seminars across the country, where the speakers were what he termed “all-star lawyers,” like Gerry Spence. He recalled one particular lesson.
It takes guts to wait for the sound of the tapping on the microphone [in the courtroom] and someone saying, ‘The jury’s got a verdict, and they’re coming in.’
[The defense has] been offering you money. The offer has gone up while the jury was out. And the ability to say, “Nuh-uh, I’m going to wait for that verdict, takes guts.” It’s especially true when you have a fortune in the case.
BEING A GOOD STORYTELLER
[Being a good storyteller] is a real important part of being a good trial lawyer. The jury wants to hear the story. Everybody loves stories. And you’ve got to be able to engage people. Make them want to hear it.
